4th Line V.O., 13, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 199034
Originally, the plot where the current building is located, together with the neighboring one (house No. 11), formed a single property. In the second half of the 18th century — early 19th century, it belonged to the English entrepreneur and owner of a rope factory, Gilmour. In the 1830s–1860s, the plot was owned by the mechanic Kleinwort.
In 1913–1914, the new owner of the plot — entrepreneur Alfred Fyodorovich Devriyen — built a four-story house for his own publishing house, which published books on agriculture, natural science, and geography in Saint Petersburg. The architect was Herman Grimm, who designed the building in the Art Nouveau style. The facades acquired a shade of modernized neoclassicism, combining elegance and rationality.
Of Swiss origin (he was born in Lausanne in 1842), Alfred Fyodorovich Devriyen studied book publishing in Mannheim, Paris (at the Hachette firm), and London (with Trübner). He settled in Saint Petersburg in 1872. Initially, he sold books at his residence on Vasilievsky Island (3rd line, 8), and in 1881 he purchased and rebuilt a four-story house opposite the Rumyantsev Garden (2nd line, 1), where he opened a new bookstore. In 1903, together with his sons Alfred and Wilhelm, he founded the trading house "A. F. Devriyen" and ten years later began construction of the aforementioned new large building for this firm with a six-story warehouse section.
After the revolution, Devriyen left abroad. The building was nationalized. In the 1930s, a ready-made clothing atelier operated in this house; in the 1980s–1990s, it housed a collector of children's and school libraries, as well as the Vasileostrovsky Youth Center. Later, the premises were occupied by the business center "Abacus House." Since the 2010s, the building has again become state property, initially housing the office of the Federal Antimonopoly Service for Saint Petersburg, and later the Saint Petersburg CNTI, a branch of the Federal State Institution "REA" of the Ministry of Energy of Russia.
Sources:
https://www.citywalls.ru/house223.html
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Здание_книгоиздательства_А._Ф._Девриена
